Resolution

Czech Rectors Conference (CRC) Plenum adopted at its 154th Meeting, CRC Annual Assembly, the following resolution:

1. CRC has taken a critical view of the Research, Development and Innovation Council verbal evaluation method of higher education institutions. The evaluation should focus on duly accredited programs of individual HEIs; however, some HEIs were evaluated according to disciplines in which they do not have accredited degree programs and do not publish.
2. The Minister of Education, Youth and Sports Ing. Robert Plaga, Ph.D., proposed the current Vice‑Chair, JUDr. Ivan Barančík, Ph.D., to the position of the Chair of the National Accreditation Bureau for Higher Education. CRC supports this nomination.
3. CRC asks the civil service institutions to elaborate a functional epidemiological plan in the context of the ongoing coronavirus epidemic, and also as a future methodological tool for similar emergency situations.
4. CRC points out a serious problem related to the adoption of the amendment to Act No. 565/1990 Coll., on local charges. Section 3a, paragraph 1, includes a general obligation to pay the residence fee. This fee could disproportionately increase the price of student accommodation and significantly endanger the internationalization development of higher education institutions. CRC therefore calls for an amendment to the Act that would exempt university students from the residence fee.
5. CRC rejects the parliamentary initiative of the draft amendment to the Higher Education Act (Parliamentary Press 741/0) concerning further information obligations for higher education institutions. According to the CRC, the current legislation is sufficient.
6. CRC calls upon the Ministry of Education, Youth and Sports to strive to enforce the amendment to the Higher Education Act, and to other laws that would enable the implementation of priority objective 1 of the Strategic Plan 2021-2030, operational objective G, TO STRENGTHEN INTERNATIONAL DIMENSION OF HIGHER EDUCATION, in the requirement „to strengthen internationalization of higher education institutions environment itself („internationalization at home“), thus to increase number of foreign students and workers“. The realization of this operational objective is currently hindered by the practice of foreign education nostrification as a prerequisite for the admission to study of applicants with foreign education, especially of secondary education, where the regional authorities are nostrification authorities, and moreover by the practice in the field of granting visas to non-EU students.
7. CRC asks for the allocation of Jan Amos Comenius Operational Program funds from the so‑called Prague envelope for higher education and research and for the Czech Academy of Sciences and its workplaces, and for this allocation to reach at least the real level of the Operational Program Research, Development and Education in period 2014-2020 with co‑financing of higher education institutions and the Czech Academy of Sciences (co-financing of beneficiaries) in the amount of 5%.

Prague, 13 February 2020